1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process flow definition creating system, a process flow definition creating device, and a method of creating a process flow definition. The process flow definition defines processes executed by corresponding devices, and an order of executing the processes.
2. Description of the Related Art
An information processing system has been known that executes a sequence of processes. In such an information processing system, an administrator or the like may define a sequence of processes as a workflow in advance. The sequence of processes may include a combination of a typical data input process, a typical data conversion process, and/or a typical data output process. When a user inputs a command to start execution of the sequence of processes defined in the workflow, the information processing system executes the processes in accordance with an order defined by the workflow. In order to execute the sequence of the processes, the user may select the predetermined workflow. The user may not be required to select and execute the processes individually. Thus, the sequence of the processes can be efficiently executed.
FIG. 25 is a diagram showing an example of processes included in a workflow. Here, the process 1 is a process of scanning an original document, the process 2 is a process of data compression, the process 3 is an optical character recognition (OCR) process, the process 4 is a PDF conversion process, and the process 5 is a mail sending process. In many cases, such a workflow is defined by an administrator of a user's account. The definition of the workflow may be made by combining such processes. The user may select a desired workflow from a plurality of workflows that is defined in advance by the administrator (cf. Patent Document 1 (Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2011-035779), for example). Patent Document 1 discloses an image forming device that displays names of defined workflows and processes included in the corresponding workflows. Here, each of the workflows corresponds to the processes included in the workflow.